At the initiative of Maayan Degani Gabbay, Israeli student and president of the Orléans Tours University section of the Union of Jewish Students of France (UEJF), and with the support of the Jewish community of Orléans (CIO), and its president, André Druon, but also of Éliane Klein, regional delegate of the Crif Région Centre, and François Guggenhein, regional delegate of the Crif Tours.
Many personalities were present at this ceremony: Serge Grouard, Mayor of Orléans, Jean-Pierre Sueur, former senator and minister, presidents and representatives or members of associations (Licra, AJC, SOS Racisme, Loire-Vistule, Cercil). Agnès Lefranc, pastor of Orléans and many members of the Jewish community were also present to show their support and solidarity.
Maayan Degani Gabbay, president of the UEJF Tours Orléans section, addressed the assembly in a very powerful and moving speech:
“Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends and comrades in struggle,
Thank you for being here to pay tribute to the six murdered Israeli hostages found in a tunnel in Gaza on August 31. Thank you for being here to share our pain and pay tribute to them.
We are here to remember Hersh Polin-Goldberg, Eden Yerushalmi, Carmel Gat, Ori Danino, Almog Sarusi and Alex Lobanov.
Hersh, Eden, Ori, Almog and Alex were abducted by Hamas at the Nova festival on October 7, while their friends were massacred by terrorists. Carmel Gat was abducted from her parents’ home in Kibbutz Be’eri on the same day. The six spent 330 days in captivity, almost eleven months. Their bodies were found by the IDF in a tunnel in Rafah, murdered with two bullets to the head.
For eleven months they were held in inhumane and unimaginable conditions. The tunnel where they were found was narrow and low, it did not even allow an adult to stand up, they had no mattresses, no toilets, no daylight, no fresh air.
Eleven months of suffering and hope for freedom. Eleven months of constant struggle by their families, who spoke to politicians in Israel, the United States, Europe and everywhere, who demonstrated to demand their immediate return, who felt that a part of their heart was being taken away. Eleven months that the world is on fire. And we feel their pain.
Our hearts and support are with the six hostages and their families, as well as the 101 hostages who remain in captivity. We await their immediate return and pray for peace.
Two weeks ago I returned from a visit to Israel. I would like to tell you what the atmosphere is like on its streets. In every corner of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, we see the faces of the hostages and those who died since October 7, posted on walls, on posters and stickers, stuck at bus stops, in restaurants, toilets, bars, writings demanding their return on walls, on flags… Their return and their memory commemorated in the form of bracelets, necklaces, which have their names, which read “our heart is captive in Gaza”, and much more. Every Saturday, every week, there are rallies in the big cities, demanding the release of the hostages. In Tel Aviv, the square of the rallies is now called “the square of the hostages”. The Israeli people gather there to give their support to the families of the hostages, and to demand their return.
Among the faces on display and the writing on the walls, as I walked around Jerusalem, I saw many posters and graffiti calling for Hersh’s release. Hersh Polin-Goldberg, who was 23, grew up in Jerusalem, just a few neighborhoods from where I grew up. He moved to Israel with his family from the United States when he was seven.
He was a pure soul, full of beauty and love for those around him. He fought for peace between Palestinians and Israelis, through different initiatives, he supported the football group, HaPoel Yerushalaym, he loved to travel, and had plane tickets to make a two-year trip around the world, for December 2023. He was extremely loved and appreciated. He was dancing with his friends on his last day of freedom. All his relatives and acquaintances speak of him with love. Everyone hoped and waited for his return. His face is everywhere in Israel, he entered the hearts of the thousands of people, who attended his funeral. The cries and lamentations of pain could be heard from afar.
We mourn the loss of his family. We mourn his death. We mourn the death of all the hostages and victims.
The faces of the hostages are very familiar to the UEJF activists, who regularly put up posters with the faces and names of the hostages. When you put up the faces of 251 people every week, every night, posters with the faces of Hersh, Carmel, Ori, you start to get attached to these people. You are interested in their lives, their fate, what they are. You want them to go home, to see their family again. You want them to be safe. Why are they even being held?
This is also why when we learn of the terrible fate of these hostages, we feel pain, loss, and even a sense of failure. Why failure? Because one of the goals of the collages is to raise awareness so that we can bring them home. Bring them home.
I joined my first UEJF event a week after October 7th. It was the first space I was in where we talked about it, we shared the shock, the pain, and the terror. I don’t know how I would be this year if I hadn’t joined this space. The only one that gave support as a collective, especially when you live in a city that has such a small community that feels impacted by it.
I could have told you about Ori Danino, 25, who managed to escape at the time of the massacre, but was kidnapped when he returned to save others.
I could have told you about Almog, 27, who loved hiking and playing guitar.
I could have told you about Alex, 32, who loved life, people and freedom, whose second child was born while he was in captivity.
I could have told you at length about Carmel Gat, 40 years old, who returned from a trip to the Himalayas, who brought light, and gave yoga and meditation classes to the children and adults who were in captivity with her.
I will tell you about Eden Yerushalmi, 24 years old. A funny and cheerful girl who loved the sea and was eager to work at the Nova festival bar. She was very close to her family. On October 7, she hid in a car with the bodies of two girls. She talked to her sisters for hours and asked to be found. Her family hoped to see her in the next hostage exchange. But the exchange failed. When her body was returned to Israel, we learned that she weighed 36 kg. She survived eleven months of terrible conditions, only to be cruelly murdered at the end.
The discovery of these terrible conditions, and the violence in which these six hostages were executed, is unbearable. This is an emergency. The hostages must be released immediately, before it is too late.
There are still 101 hostages in Gaza. They are the mothers, fathers, grandfathers, and children of 101 families. They all represent a life, and a world of their own, they also represent the tens and thousands of people who will feel the pain of their loss, if they are found too late.
We are here to mourn the death of the hostages, to call for peace and the release of the remaining 101 hostages.”
Kaddish was then read before the assembly observed a minute of silence and candles were lit in memory of the six murdered hostages.
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